I’m not getting into a political debate, but the NBN is just like the national highway network; VITAL infrastructure that will reap rewards that have yet to be fully contemplated.
It must be done, it will be done, it’s inevitable. I will only cost more later, and cost us from and international tech standpoint.
While I understand the Libs standpoint that the $13 billion (their inaccurate figure) difference that their solution will provide is greatly needed elsewhere at the moment, it’s myopic.
By the time their solution is completed, it will be out-dated.
It is like the M5 in Sydney or the Monash in Melbourne, by the time they finished their construction, they were already too small and congested. They knew it from the original planning too.
It just pushed the economic problem onto another government.

We have a unique problem here though, nearly the same land mass of the US, but a population smaller than Northern California. So the cost per capita is greater than other countries have to deal with.
But that is why the cost of living in Aus is so high too.

Don’t talk to me about wireless because that bandwidth is so small regardless of speed it’s next to useless for tech solutions.

So the government investment in this is not to just create business for ISPs, but to allow for entire industries to exist in the near and far future.
And that is our return, creating and environment that industry can exist to employ people. In the same way we have spent billions on the car industry.
This is why it gets praised by so many foreign nations that have no dog in the fight, because they are already there or heading there and can see what they get out of it now, let alone as the entire first world globe heads that way.
For all of labours moronic faults that rightly had them booted from govt, this basic concept and Conroy’s handling of the telco industry was fantastic.